


But you

by Zoya113



Category: Hatchetfield Universe - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:13:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29733717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zoya113/pseuds/Zoya113
Summary: When Emma stops by CCRP to drop off some coffee on her break, she has a lot to complain about, but Paul is happy to listen if he can get one particularly annoying interlocutor out of his office.
Relationships: Paul Matthews/ Emma Perkins
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	But you

“Seriously - I’ve tried talking to her, I’ve tried talking to mister Davidson, and neither of them will sort it out, but how is that even legal?” 

Paul didn’t know how he had wound up getting stuck in his office during lunch break, having Ted talk him half to death over something he had tried to explain several times. It was a sour sort of day, and he didn’t really enjoy it. Paul didn’t appreciate being shouted at, regardless of whether it was at him or to him. 

“If you use your work email, there are certain conditions that the admins can see what you’re sending,” he tried to explain again. “If you’re so bothered by people reading your emails why don’t you just use a personal email?” He suggested. “What do you even have to hide?” 

“Oh well I hate that! Mr Davidson and Melissa target me specifically, they’re always calling me up about my emails, has that ever happened to you Paul? Even once?” Ted huffed. 

Paul shook his head. “Well, it’s not like they’re reading through them for fun,” he repeated himself for about the third time this lunch break, or what should have been his lunch break. 

“Then how come they always know what I’m sending to people?” 

“Well what are they calling you aside on?” He inquired, even though Ted seemed to ignore this question each time he asked. He already knew of course, but Ted was feigning ignorance.

“Oh nothing! Mister Davidson says I ‘can’t use that language’ which shouldn’t be any of his problems if he wasn’t reading it! And then Melissa makes me apologise to everyone I email! This is an office, I’m going to be emailing people! What, does she want me to apologise to you too?” 

“Well, Ted, the reason IT has been asked to put a ban on who you can and can’t email is most likely because certain words get flagged when they are sent through the system,” he clasped his hands together. “Yeah I hate it too, it has a real 1984 vibe to it but if you happened to perhaps be flirting or making advances on any of the women we’ve had to ban you from talking to,” he trailed off, hoping it would ring a bell for Ted as to why the office admin had been going through his emails.

“What? So I’m not allowed to ask Elise from accounting to coffee with me in an email? You want me to go get her personal number for that just to ask her?” He scowled like he had been ripped off. 

“I believe the words actually were-“ he squinted to focus on his computer in the email Melissa had sent him regarding the situation: “’hey babe, you, me, a couple of drinks, see where it leads?’” 

“As in coffee!” He exclaimed to defend himself. “Why would drinks mean alcohol? What’s not allowed about any of that!?” He spat. “I hate that!” 

Paul flinched at Ted’s voice in his ear, closing the email Melissa had sent containing the compilation of all of his flagged emails, the man’s presence really starting to grind on him. “I’m sorry, I can’t do anything about it. Mister Davidson has asked me to put a temporary ban on your email outside of a few specific emails,” he shrugged. He had even added his own email to the ban list, purely because he didn’t really want to get another chain email from him. 

“Yeah, sorry man I hate that for you too but Mr Davidson and Melissa and all the ladies you’ve been emailing would like you to leave them alone.” 

“Well maybe if they were so uncomfortable they’d approach me themselves! The others don’t need to interfere!” He scoffed, and Paul sighed, glancing at the time. 

Fortunately before he had to come up with a way to explain basic human dignity and consent to this full grown man, Emma arrived with a loud groan to announce her entrance. 

“Monday morning shifts at a coffee shop have to be the worst shifts you can get. I hate ‘em,” she rolled her eyes, dropping a coffee tray of drinks at Paul’s table before stumbling over to Charlotte’s empty seat to drop herself down in it. “My leg hurts like hell, too.” She stretched out her bad leg in front of her testingly, wincing. 

“Hey, who doesn’t hate Monday’s?” Ted gave her complaint a dismissive wave, examining the tray to find out which drink was his. 

“Hey, Monday’s here are totally different to Monday’s at a coffee shop. Hospitality and office jobs are two different things, Ted,” Paul took his drink first, cutting Ted’s reach off, partially in revenge for having ruined his lunch break.

“Exactly, Paul, and they’re even worse when you’re out delivering drinks and everyone’s rushing everywhere,” Emma continued. “Some asshole nearly ran me over!” She straightened up at the memory, rejuvenated from her walk by nothing but spite. 

“Were you jaywalking?” Ted teased.

“Hey!” Paul quickly cut in, knowing Emma had her spotty history with car incidents. “Give her a break, here’s your chai.” 

“Yeah, I was crossing the road like a normal person dick head. You’re lucky I still made you your dumb drink today, there’s hardly any time for charity drinks on a day like today.” 

“Sheesh,” Ted picked up his chai iced tea to take a sip. “Charity drinks? I gave you five bucks. You complain a lot.”

“Well you can complain when you’re a barista and you’re waiting for your dumb herbs to brew when you’re serving three other customers at once,” she bit back. “You have a problematic order. Your drink doesn’t even taste good.” 

“Well hey!” Ted snapped, his free hand balled up in a fist. “It’s your job!”

“Well I hate my job!” She stood up in an attempt to match his energy, shoulders square, standing on the tips of her toes to try and reach his height.

“Get a new one then!” He retorted teasingly.

“Guys!” Paul stood up too, fortunately taller than the both of them and with the right energy to diffuse the fight before it could start. “Ted you hate your job too and yet you still do it.”

“Don’t let me stop you from quitting though,” Emma sneered, a pleased yet sly grin on her face that Paul had come to back her up, and Ted had no chance of winning. “I hate seeing you here,” it was friendly bullying for the most part, although Paul couldn’t ever imagine Emma was happy to see him. 

“Well wow,” he took one long sip of his drink as if to show he wasn’t bothered at all, even glancing around to take in his surroundings as he swallowed. “You just hate everything, don’t you?”

Emma quietened down, shoulders slouching but eyes remaining wide and fixed on him. “I’m allowed to have my own opinions, but go off I guess,” she rubbed her arm, shooting him an upset look.

Paul frowned, tilting his head, unable to read Emma’s mood.

“I was just making conversation, buddy, but I do stand by hating you, asshole,” she had delivered the statement like it was a quippy closing argument, with some facade of triumph to her face before storming off prematurely. 

Paul knew Monday’s were busy days for her, but usually she stayed a bit longer when she delivered coffee.

“God, what’s her problem today?” Ted snorted, leaning against Paul’s table.

“You were on her back a bit, man,” Paul told him. “I think she was having a bad day already, you were being uh, kind of a dick about it, man.”

“What! You can make conversations in other ways than just straight up complaining. I don’t think she said a single thing that wasn’t a complaint, I was counting!” He pointed out in his own defence, giving a slight, incredulous shake of his head. 

He seemed to have forgotten his whole argument over the email situation. “If I kept a tally of all the stuff you say you hate in a day I think you’d have like, the second or third most complaints in the whole office,” he betted. 

“Who’s first?” Ted seemed to pause their debate to inquire.

“Oh, me, probably,” Paul shrugged. He did hate a lot of things, musicals, shitty coffee, weekly reports, Ted. “Who is it hurting for Emma to say the traffic is busy?”

“Well I just can’t be like, assed to listen to it. I’ve already got a lot on my back with this dumb email situation!” He threw his free hand up in the air before taking a defeated sip of his tea.

“Well it was for me to listen to,” Paul countered. “You weren’t even supposed to be in the office, it’s your lunch break.”

“It’s not polite to complain that much! Bill doesn’t complain and he’s had a divorce, and Charlotte barely complains for someone in her situation!”

“Well look at you, you’re doing it right now,” Paul pointed out rather matter of factly. “That’s what you’ve been doing since you started talking to me today, so maybe just leave her alone.”

“Oh piss off,” Ted sighed, marching out of his office before he could hear another word. “I’ll get Bill to fix it for me.”  
\------------------------------------------------

Today hadn’t really been Paul’s day, he supposed Monday’s weren’t fun for anyone but he was more tired than upset.

He didn’t have anything to complain about though, he was resting beside Emma on the couch as she studied, recuperating from the day as he scrolled down the newsfeed on his phone, ignoring a few incoming texts.

“Ugh,” Emma sighed as she turned a page of her textbook, leaning forward to her laptop. “I hate myosin shit. I don’t really have to learn it right? Not in the long run, plants don’t have muscles.”

“Only gotta learn it for the test,” Paul said what he always said, because he personally couldn’t encourage bad study habits. “Then you can drop it.”

“I just don’t get like, cycles, it’s not too many steps but I can’t visualise it,” she gave up tying in the paragraph she was working on, glancing down at the meaningless visuals on her textbook. She jammed her hands together, interlacing her fingers. “They all connect and form bridges or something, but I dunno, I do not like the cross bridge cycle.”

Paul blinked, squinting as he glanced up from his phone. “I thought it was the krebs cycle you didn’t like?”

“Oh babe,” she waved a hand. “I don’t like that either, but that was total first and second year stuff, man, it’s just groundwork, they just assume you know it now.”

“Do you?”

“No, god, of course not, but they don’t ask me about it anymore!”

He chuckled, turning her way to give her a smile.

She sort of returned it, not quite making it there as something tugged in her mind. “Guess I do hate a lot of stuff, huh?”

Paul shrugged, holding her gaze for a moment longer before it broke away naturally. “Well there’s nothing wrong with that. I hate a lot of stuff too, Ted primarily. It’s a fucked up world.”

“Mhm.”

They fell back into silence as she continued to tap away at the keyboard, occasionally leaning back and forth between the textbook in her lap and the laptop on the coffee table, still working after the long shift. 

Personally, Paul did think she had the right to complain. Any hospitality or retail worker had the right, in fact, billionaires were the only people he could think of that didn’t have the right to complain. 

He was pretty content this evening though, calming down after the day in his favourite spot on the couch, deep diving into some interesting articles about an old movie script that was half completed but never released. That’s how he liked to relax.

“He’s wrong about that though, I don’t hate everything,” Emma perked back up as something seemed to click in her brain, leaning right forward to type it down into her notes before it could slip. 

Paul grinned for her, assuming she had made the connection between the cycle she was struggling with.

“I mean, I certainly don’t hate you,” she continued.

“Oh, that’s nice Emma,” he smiled, it was all he could say before he felt his throat tighten and his heart begin to race. That was a very Emma style of compliment. It felt pretty nice, warmed him right up in his heart a lot faster than a normal ‘I love you’ ever could, because that was Emma’s own language.

He had to return to staring at his phone, even though his eyes were unable to focus on the words, heart still buzzing. He just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Emma didn’t like that.

Well, he certainly didn’t feel like complaining about anything else this evening anymore.


End file.
